Ilia Malinin led Team USA to Olympic gold with a stunning backflip, claiming his first-ever Olympic medal after being left out of the 2022 Games
Ilia Malinin’s Winter Olympics Journey (Source: X/@Rx410)
Ilia Malinin, U.S. figure skater, guided Team USA to a gold medal in the team figure skating event at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday night, surprising spectators with a spectacular performance that included a backflip landed on a single skate.
This victory marked Malinin’s first Olympic gold, a milestone made even more significant after he was controversially excluded from the U.S. team at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Ilia Malinin is a 21-year-old U.S. figure skater known for his daring quadruple jumps and record-breaking performances. He has earned the nickname “Quad God” for his ability to land multiple quadruple jumps in competition, setting him apart as one of the most exciting talents in figure skating today.
At the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday night, Ilia Malinin led Team USA to a gold medal in the team figure skating event. His performance stunned the audience, especially with a daring backflip that he landed on a single skate.
This marked Malinin’s first Olympic gold medal, a milestone that came after he was controversially left off the U.S. team at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
In the men’s short program earlier in the week, Malinin had already set himself apart by scoring 108.16, five points higher than Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, putting him in contention for a second gold medal.
“It was definitely mental,” Malinin admitted afterward. “I blew it.”
Malinin comes from a family of Olympians. His parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, were Russian-born figure skaters who represented Uzbekistan at the 1998 Nagano Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
The family later moved to Virginia, where Ilia was born in 2004. He began skating at age six.
“I thought I was going to be a soccer player,” he told People magazine. “But my parents didn’t have time to take me to soccer lessons so skating kind of took over.”
Despite falling twice in his free skate program and finishing eighth individually, Malinin wowed spectators with his backflip. Among the crowd was 24-time Grand Slam tennis champion Novak Djokovic, who reacted in sheer disbelief.
“I’ve heard from everyone that after I landed my backflip he was standing there, hands on his head, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s incredible,’” Malinin said. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment seeing a famous tennis player watching my performance. I'm absolutely blown away.”
Malinin’s skill is impressing even the greats of the sport. Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion, told the New York Times:
“You’re like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ He does these ninja flips and rotational things, things that didn’t exist before. He’s so different than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s come from 50 years in the future to show us how far the sport has come.”
Similarly, 1992 Olympic champion Kristi Yamaguchi told the Associated Press:
“We never thought we would be alive to see a quad axel performed and landed in competition, and here comes Ilia, just whipping it off like it’s nothing. Pretty amazing. Just so many factors go into creating this perfect world to do what he’s done.”
Malinin, then 17, was left off the 2022 U.S. Olympic team despite finishing second at the national championships. The decision favored 27-year-old Jason Brown instead.
Since then, Malinin has been unstoppable. He has won gold at the last three Grand Prix Finals, captured the past two world titles, and entered the Milan Cortina Games unbeaten in 14 competitions over more than two years.
Malinin came up with the nickname “Quad God” while updating his Instagram handle. “I was like, 'Oh, I landed a quad? Quad God, there it is, okay, let's put it in,'” he told CBS News. “And from there everyone's like, 'Why'd you name yourself Quad God? You only have one quad.’ And I'm like, 'Well, now that I think about it, maybe I should try to land all of them to get the Quad God status.'”
By December at the Grand Prix Finals, he became the first skater ever to land seven quadruple jumps, earning comparisons to gymnastics legend Simone Biles. “Call him Simone Biles on ice,” Bryan Armen Graham wrote in The Guardian. “The only real drama lies in his own ambition.”
Despite his extraordinary abilities, Malinin emphasizes his humanity. “I wouldn’t tell people I’m untouchable. I want the opposite. I want people to relate to me,” he told the AP. “Yes, I’m doing all these crazy things on the ice that defy physics in some ways. I still want them to see all of us skaters are human beings. We still have normal parts of our lives. We’re very similar to everyone in the crowd. We have emotions. We go through good things and bad things in life. I just want to express to people that we’re human. We’re not perfect.”
Malinin also has bigger ambitions beyond winning. “It’s a lot to handle the pressure, all the attention, all the focus on you to become the Olympic gold hopeful,” he said before the team competition, per The Times. “A lot of the times I’ll have bad days where I think about that, and it really shuts me down, and it really puts me in, you know, not the best moods.”
He wants to take the sport to new heights, “I really want to bring it back to its prime glory days,” Malinin said. “I want to revolutionize the sport.”
